Rory Hohenstein sets down his coffee and raises his arms, and suddenly it's as if he's a different person.

"It's weird internal movement all the time," he says, describing the steps in the ballet "Eden/Eden," stretching his chest wide and undulating his shoulders to demonstrate. His pale face, with its dusting of freckles, no longer looks so boyish; his slight 5-foot-10 frame becomes larger than life.

Hohenstein looks transformed -- and it is a transformation that San Francisco Ballet audiences have been seeing a lot of lately. Six years ago, as an 18-year-old corps newbie, Hohenstein had an onstage persona more like his presence in real life: friendly, sweet, a little shy. But when Hohenstein steps out in the Opera House these days, he is something else: impassioned, unabashed and possessed of leading-man intensity. Choreographers have taken note.

No surprise, then, that Hohenstein is suddenly all over the place, dancing everything from a charming Frenchman in "Aunis" to one of the lusty sailors in Jerome Robbins' "Fancy Free." Currently he's stealing scenes as the head roper in Agnes de Mille's "Rodeo." This week he reprises his go-for-broke solo as the Red Man in Lar Lubovitch's "Elemental Brubeck."

It's the Red Man solo that launched Hohenstein toward his promotion to soloist in 2006 -- and not just because its razzle-dazzle steps drew on his childhood love of jazz and all things hammy. Exposed and all-out, the role pushed this normally reserved native of small-town Maryland past any last traces of bashfulness.

"It's an odd sensation when you're out there alone and can't see faces, only darkness," Hohenstein says at a Hayes Valley cafe during his Monday off. " 'Elemental Brubeck' was when I finally exhaled and enjoyed it. I think that was a moment when Helgi" -- Artistic Director Helgi Tomasson -- "saw me hold the stage to myself."

Hohenstein has wanted to prove himself to Tomasson since he was barely a teenager. At age 7, after seeing Mikhail Baryshnikov and Gregory Hines in "White Nights," he asked his parents to enroll him in jazz and tap classes. By age 12, he was studying as a boarding student at the Kirov Academy in Washington, D.C. -- the same school that produced San Francisco Ballet principal Vanessa Zahorian. By age 14, he knew he wanted to join San Francisco Ballet.

"In school you hear about dream companies, the Royal Ballet or American Ballet Theatre," he says. "San Francisco was always on that map."

At 16, with the San Francisco Ballet on tour at Washington's Kennedy Center, Hohenstein auditioned. Wheater noticed him immediately.

"He feels the music with his body," Wheater says. "So many dancers do the step but are never really with the music. Rory is immersed."

Tomasson was impressed, too, but told Hohenstein he was too young and not yet authoritative enough for the stage. So Hohenstein took a job with the much smaller Jeune Ballet de France instead. Then in spring of 2000, he did a bold thing: He asked Tomasson to see him again.

It so happened that Tomasson was traveling through Madrid, where the Jeune Ballet was on tour. He came to the show. A solo choreographed especially for Hohenstein was on the program, but Hohenstein's best friend was scheduled to dance it that day, as part of the second cast. When they learned that Tomasson was in the audience, they changed costumes just before curtain.

The solo was contorted, contemporary, shape-shifting -- just the kind of thing that Hohenstein, with his lithe yet broad-shouldered, pliant physique, shines in. Tomasson came backstage and offered Hohenstein a contract on the spot.

Hohenstein cut his teeth in the corps like everyone else, though breaks came his way: Phlegmatic in Balanchine's "Four Temperaments," Wheeldon's "Polyphonia." One day ballet mistress Anita Paciotti noticed Hohenstein tap-dancing as he waited for the elevator. "Rory, do you tap?" she asked, and smiled mischievously when he said yes. A year later, his name was on the casting sheet as the Head Roper in de Mille's "Rodeo."

"I didn't know there was tap in it," he says. "And when we got to that point in rehearsal, I was horrified. 'You want me to do what? With no music?' "

But his rhythms were clean and, more important, his acting was natural and charming.

"Rodeo," for all its sweet appeal, is not Hohenstein's best showcase.

"I tend to like things that are more intense and darker," he says.

He idolizes principal dancer Damian Smith and dreams of playing Iago in "Othello" one day.

Meanwhile, with his rehearsal schedule so packed, it's no surprise to find him absentmindedly fingering the yogic "Om" pendant that hangs from his neck.

"It helps me remember to breathe," he says.

But he's not complaining about the workload.

"When you're performing this often, you don't get a chance to be nervous," he says. "And so now I'm not afraid to let go onstage. When you know you can get out there and put on that smile or shake those hands" -- he holds up splayed fingers in a wide-mouthed Broadway imitation -- "you can swallow that thing in your throat and go for it."